Abstract
The practical realization of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells, which can directly convert heat into electric power, is of considerable technological interest. However, most existing TPV cells require heat sources at temperatures of ∼1800°C. Here we report a low bandgap mid-infrared cell based on InAs and demonstrate TPV operation with heat sources at temperatures in the range 500–950°C. The maximum open circuit voltage (V oc) and short circuit current density (J sc) were measured as 0.06 V and 0.89 A cm−2 for a blackbody temperature of 950°C and an incident power density of 720 mW cm−2 without antireflection coating or electrode optimisation. TPV operation was obtained with heat sources at temperatures as low as 500°C, which represents progress towards energy scavenging and waste heat recovery applications.
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Acknowledgements
Financial support for this work was provided by the UK Technology Strategy Board in collaboration with CST Global, IQE Ltd., Tata Steel, and Pilkington Ltd. under Grant No: TP11/LCE/6/I/AE096F and EPSRC Grant EP/M013707/1.
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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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Krier, A., Yin, M., Marshall, A.R.J. et al. Low Bandgap InAs-Based Thermophotovoltaic Cells for Heat-Electricity Conversion. J. Electron. Mater. 45, 2826–2830 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-016-4373-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-016-4373-0